Miracle Maker

I am continuing my personal story of how the hand of God has shaped and repaired my life from the results left over from losing my mother at the age of four.

In "Out of the Fog" ... I spoke of the tragic life history of my mother.  Now I want to share the story of another woman God used to affect my life in a positive way.

One year before the birth of my mother, another baby girl was born in a small town in west central Illinois.  She would grow up attending what was then called "brush arbor meetings" held by traveling preachers.  As a teenager her heart's desire turned to the things of God.

Feeling as though she was called to the ministry, she decided to attend Bible College.  As a young single woman with her new seminary degree she helped pastor two or three small churches in Arizona and New Mexico for a while.  

But all was not good.  As with my birth mother, a serious event in her life would bring on much distress and concern.  Within a few years she found out that she had ovarian cancer.  If I understood the story from her own lips ... this young woman had a complete hysterectomy and the removal of her reproductive organs ... meaning she would never give birth to her own children.  She told me, this became one of her main concerns thinking, what man would want her now?

Life isn't fair is it.  But she resolved within her heart to still live for her Lord even without children.  But God wasn't through with her either.  God had plans for this special young woman.  Unknown to either of us ... a four year old motherless boy, and this barren, childless Christian woman were going to cross paths.

As a four year old boy,  I had absolutely no defense against the fear inflicted upon my young heart and mind after the death of my mother.  Daytime wasn't a problem ... it was in the dark ... at night, after I was asleep.  I was tormented by dreams of evil creatures climbing up into my bed trying to pull me down into hell from which they came.

I didn't learn until much later, years in fact, that my young soul was being attacked by demonic spirits trying to make me believe I had no choice, that I was ... destined for Hell.  My mother was gone and she was never coming back.  I would never see her again; I would never hear her warm comforting voice when I was afraid, or hear her laugh again or call my name. 

With my mother's death, I was left in a vulnerable position not only for emotional distress, but I was also open for spiritual attacks from Satan.  What I saw and felt was just as real as my mother's death.  I found out just how real the spirit world is.  It's real, and it can be terrifying to a small child.

You have heard the phrase ... "God works in mysterious ways."  Well, I'm not disagreeing with that, but what God can work out is to move and arrange things so that His will for you is accomplished.  God can fix problems that happen in life. 

I had a problem.  My two brothers had the same problem.  We were three boys without a mother.  Our father had a problem.  What was he to do by himself with three young boys?  So what does God do?  He arranges for our father to meet this special Christian lady I have been speaking of.  The one who had cancer.  The one who could not give birth to her own children. 

Within six months or so, dad had a new loving wife and we had a new mother.  To be open and honest with you ... I didn't want her.  I was four years old and I didn't know this new person.  I wanted my real mom ... but that was not going to happen.

So for the next sixteen years she raised me, teaching me about Jesus.  I left home armed with the truth of the Word of God that she had taught and lived out in front of me.

Now here is where it gets interesting.

My new mother, years later confided in me that she used to worry about never having children to love and raise as a family.  Then she said ... "But God took care of that when your father asked me to marry him and do what he could not do ... be a mother to his boys.  I had a ready made family."

Isn't God good.

Life goes on, and the years go by quickly.  Forty years or so later, this loving mother is again confronted with cancer.  She is now around seventy years old.  Colon cancer ... but operable.  It is removed and tested ... it's ovarian cancer.  What?  How is that possible?  Her ovaries were removed fifty years before.

Her cancer doctor wanted to publish an article in a national medical journal about how some of her ... previous ovarian cancer cells ... attached themselves to her abdominal wall and laid there dormant for fifty years.  But mom said no to his request.

I did not know until the colon cancer, that she never agreed with either of the two cancer diagnosis given to her.  She refused to ever say that she had cancer.  She just wouldn't say it.  She denied she had cancer to her dying day.     

Now do you see why I said ... God wasn't through with her yet.  God had plans for her.  Cancer doesn't worry God one bit.  Yes ... He allowed it to form.  But He can also speak to cancer and it will lay dormant until He says otherwise.  And so it did.

As in my last post, "Out of the Fog," this scripture is fitting: Ecclesiastes 3:1 ... "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
 
God's purpose for this woman was ... to live and raise as her own ... three boys, one of whom was me.

God made a way. 

He is the ... "Miracle Maker" ... you know.

Blessings ...